tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-87367938838688387172017-04-07T01:57:42.880-07:00OMGmbaappsOMG I am applying for a MBA.OMGparishiltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10187329390676174925noreply@blogger.comBlogger37125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8736793883868838717.post-48167000737203364732009-04-22T23:52:00.000-07:002009-04-23T07:28:49.212-07:00How to funnel your hard earned money into our I-bank : the Goldman primerIts fucking amazing.<br /><br />Amidst the current economic mess, while jobs are being lost in millions, people are being forced to leave their homes left right and center, life savings, 401ks, retirement savings of the common man are being reduced to rubbles, I banks (read Goldman Sachs) continue to churn out amazing profits from what is now nothing but a naked form of state-subsidized (read Obama administration) profit generating racket for the remaining few I-banks (Goldman primarily after Merryl, Bear Sterns and Lehmann managed to go belly up with greed, as a sidenote the <span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">prestigious scumbag and asshole of the decade award goes to (Sloan) Harvard alum and ex Merryl CEO John Thain</span><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(255, 0, 0);"> for managing to award himself and his fellow execs 100s of millions of $$ in performance bonus exactly 8 days before they had to go to the US government asking for a bailout</span>).<br /><br />Ok lets start:<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(153, 0, 0);">The chief players: Goldman Sachs, SEC, White house</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 0);">Cameos: Merryl, Bear Sterns, Lehmann</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(102, 51, 0);">Comic relief: AIG</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">Act 1: The great depression of 09 aka how wall street managed to ass rape you</span><br /><br />The story so far (<a href="http://www.smirkingchimp.com/author/matt_taibbi">quoted in green</a>):<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 51, 0);">A former Goldman chief, Rubin, presses the Commodities Futures Trading Commission(CFTC, a federal government regulation and enforcing agency for the market) to deregulate a type of derivative contract whose chief benefit to an investment bank like Goldman is that it allows it to lend more — the CDS being most useful as a tool to move investment risk off a bank’s balance sheet. Then another Goldman chief, Paulson, pushes for further relaxation of lending limits. Then Goldman jumps head-first into the housing bubble, buying tens of billions in CDS protection to hedge their crazy investments. This massive explosion in lending by banks like Goldman, fueled in part by the use of derivatives like CDS and fueled still more by the 2004 change in rules, puts an enormous strain on the economy, leading to giant holes blown in its hull by the end of 2007 and on through 2008. It follows that when Goldman’s chief partners in those CDS deals, AIG, collapses as part of this wave of crashes, Paulson — now Treasury Secretary — rushes to the rescue, pumping billions in taxpayer money into AIG that is quickly funneled to Goldman. Then a Goldman alum is put in charge of AIG while another bunch of Goldman alums funnels still more bailout money to AIG, and yet another Goldman alum is put in charge of regulating the derivative market that is the focus of most of the bailout efforts. </span><p style="color: rgb(0, 51, 0);">In the midst of all of this, something amazing happens. Goldman Sachs, along with Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, and a host of other “troubled” banks, reports a profit for its first quarter in 2009! How and why that happened is another fascinating story, for another time. For now the only thing to remember is that all the same people who got us into this mess — Rubin, Summers, Goldman in general — are now being put in charge of the cleanup by a president who spent most of 18 months on the campaign trail pledging to end the influence of money in politics.</p> <p style="color: rgb(0, 51, 0);">Add this together with the obscene giveaway that is the Toxic Asset program Geither has just devised (Goldman Sachs “expressed interest in participating in the plan as an investor,” according to the WSJ), and you have an amazing situation. Between the Bush and Obama administrations, you have a bailout program that has now figured three ways to funnel money to Goldman, Sachs: via AIG, via TARP, and now via this trillion-dollar “Public-Private Investment Program,” which basically lends huge amounts of money to investors and provides guarantees against heavy losses. It’s free money, state-subsidized profiteering at its most naked.</p><p><br /></p><p><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(153, 0, 0);">Hail Goldman, fucking assholes, all of you execs and b-school alums at Goldman should be lined up in a row and asked to eat shit burgers followed by a "thanks a lot, can I have one more and please can you piss on me while you are flipping those shit burgers".</span></p><p><br /></p><p><span style="font-style: italic;">In today's fun news: I played poker at the airport on saturday after my flight got delayed on a supremely dodgy Boingo connection, and managed to rip $8k off a huge donkish player in less than 2 hours. </span><br /></p>OMGparishiltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10187329390676174925noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8736793883868838717.post-21140068857106826062009-04-07T12:15:00.000-07:002009-04-07T13:00:00.282-07:00EFF U WORLD: so says Citi and AIG and I-BanksAnd the plot (conspiracy?) thickens. Those following the markets would know that there was a memo <a href="http://www.marketwatch.com/News/Story/text-citigroup-memo-sent-ceo/story.aspx?guid=%7BE3F5C849-F5FD-4D36-9686-E355B13236E4%7D"> by Citi chief Vikram Pandit</a> in early March, that got conveniently (?) leaked to the media and that shows that Citi was pretty profitable in the first quarter of 09, quoting Pandit:<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(102, 0, 0); font-weight: bold;">"In fact, we are profitable through the first two months of 2009 and are having our best quarter-to-date performance since the third quarter of 2007. In January and February alone, our revenues excluding externally disclosed marks were $19 billion".</span><br /><br />Of course soon thereafter other such news came gushing in from other I-banks (JPMorgan, BOFA, GS..etc etc) and all of them reported major profits in that time frame (first two months of 09). For the layman like me this was utterly puzzling, banks with garbage on their balance sheets suddenly should not, by any logical means, start raking in big profits in a market with ever widening spreads and a ultra tight credit market.<br /><br />But spending a ton of time reading a ton of, usually useless information, does have its perks when I finally came up on these whistle-blowing bunch of writeups from <a href="http://zerohedge.blogspot.com/2009/03/exclusive-aig-was-responsible-for-banks.html">Zerohedge</a>, there is a followup post on <a href="http://rortybomb.wordpress.com/">Rortybomb</a> as well.<br /><br />Basically what Pandit and his clique at the I-banks are upto this time is the following, (I quote in green)<br /><ul style="color: rgb(0, 51, 0);"><li>AIG, knowing it would need to ask for much more capital from the Treasury imminently, decided to throw in the towel, and gifted major bank counter-parties with trades which were egregiously profitable to the banks, and even more egregiously money losing to the U.S. taxpayers, who had to dump more and more cash into AIG, without having the U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner disclose the real extent of this, for lack of a better word, fraudulent scam. (<span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">this happened in the jan-early march time frame of 09</span>).<br /></li></ul><ul style="color: rgb(0, 51, 0);"><li>What this all means is that the statements by major banks, i.e. JPM, Citi, and BofA, regarding abnormal profitability in January and February were true, however <span style="font-weight: bold;">these profits were a) one-time in nature due to wholesale unwinds of AIG portfolios, b) entirely at the expense of AIG, and thus taxpayers, c) executed with Tim Geithner's (and thus the administration's) full knowledge and intent, d) were basically a transfer of money from taxpayers to banks (in yet another form) using AIG as an intermediary.</span></li></ul>So essentially AIG is a clearing house, it funnels in tax-payer money in billions and serves it up on silver platters to I-banks with a ton of garbage derivatives on their balance sheets as profitable trade opportunities. The sad part is that the banks then come up with blatantly false follow-up statements, on the back of these criminally-shady deals, announcing "Hello world we are profitable invest in us".<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(102, 0, 0);">One wonders how much low can this supposedly respectable executives at I-banks stoop to? As I have alluded several times in this blog "Ethics for MBA, often publicized with vigor by B-schools" is an eye-candy meant for mary poppins.</span><br /><br />Also to those disgruntled soul(s) who have spammed my mail box/comment section (comment moderation is now on) on the previous post regarding false claims and charges of plagiarism, which I-bank do you work for?OMGparishiltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10187329390676174925noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8736793883868838717.post-10889323430564470762009-03-31T22:19:00.000-07:002009-04-02T07:17:36.902-07:00Some Observations on Goldman Sachs from a finance applicant's perspectiveMy weekend <a href="http://zerohedge.blogspot.com/2009/03/is-gs-tempting-interest-rate-black-swan.html">reading</a> yielded some interesting titbit pieces of info that could be of interest to mba applicants as well as mba students interested in finance. The titbits however are not encouraging if you are thinking of I-banks/Wall street careers.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(153, 0, 0);">Background</span>: What I will talk about is the so called derivative space in I/commercial banking, a particular member of this derivative space : credit default swaps (CDS) is now being accused of being the villain that brought down the financial sector.<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 51, 0); font-weight: bold;">The CDS for the layman is essentially an insurance against something (usually company bonds/debt etc). An underwriter (AIG) like your local auto insurer charges the insuree a monthly payment (coupon) determined by the CDS rate and if something bad happens to the insuree's holdings the underwriter ponies up the insured money just like an auto insurer pays for your wrecked car in case of accidents. Of course when all these CDSes started defaulting simultaneously (<span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">primarily because they were junk grade to start with, for example a pizza delivery boy in orange county,CA ,offered a 350k house loan on zero down, underwritten by AIG, packaged as CDS instrument by Lehmann... u get the picture)</span>, the insurer (AIG) was called upon by a myriad of insurees for the lumpsump payments causing the meltdown.</span><br /><br />Now the derivative space has some more members besides the CDS notably :<br /><ol><li>interest rate</li><li>foreign echange</li><li>equities</li><li>commodities</li><li>CDS<br /></li></ol> <span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(102, 0, 0);">Brief history tutorial for the layman</span>: During the boom period in Wall street (1998 to 2007) , leading to the meltdown, the entire derivative space ballooned from $33 trillion to about $200 trillion, while CDS grew from about $150 billion to $5 trillion.<br /><br />However another silent player in this dreaded derivatives basket seems to have risen in a more alarming fashion. It is the interest rate (1, in the list above, specifically swaps but also futures and forwards) that has grown from $24.8 trillion to $164.4 trillion!<br /><br />In simple terms an interest rate swap (IRS) are merely contracts exchanging a stream of interest payments for another party's stream of cash flows, the underlying interest rate is often the Fed rate. Now associated with the IRS and derivatives is something called Total Credit exposure (TCE) which is essentially a metric that measures a bank's risky credit/risk eposure. Higher the number worse the bank.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(153, 0, 0);">Now for the bad news:</span><br />The Office of the comptroller of currency released a chart last week for the top 5 banks and the percentage of their total credit in relation to the potential toxic risky credits/derivatives arising from interest rate swaps (item 1 in the derivative basket above).<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_U5X3N_m5haQ/SdL_6x54TaI/AAAAAAAAADk/jncj5RRBRe4/s1600-h/occ4.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 415px; height: 517px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_U5X3N_m5haQ/SdL_6x54TaI/AAAAAAAAADk/jncj5RRBRe4/s400/occ4.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5319595495171575202" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Table reproduced for better visibility:</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 0);">Total credit exposure to risk based capital (%)</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 0);">JPmorgan: 400(Q4 03), 384 (Q4 08)</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 0);">Bank of America: 178(Q03,08), 179 (Q4 08)</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 0);">Citi 260: (Q3), 278(Q4)</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">Goldman: 4(Q3), 1056(Q4)</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 0);">HSBC : 664 (Q3), 550(Q4)</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">And drum-rolls please we have a winner. IT IS OUR OLD I-BANK PAL GOLDMAN SACHS WITH A STAGGERING 1056% % ratio of their total credit in terms of interest rate swaps. </span><br /><br />The ramifications of this I leave to the readers, but just for fun imagine GS defaulting on these, ah wouldnt that make the AIG collapse look like peanuts. For those getting ready to join Goldman Sachs be sure to ask your bosses about these charts, Id love to have an explanation for their immense love of interest rate swaps. Also those in the class rooms do me a favor ask your fin-profs about these numbers, either way I'd love to know whats going on with this epic GS and IRS love saga. And a true love saga always needs a tragic ending, right ;-)<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 0);">Charts Source :</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 0);">http://www.occ.treas.gov/ftp/release/2009-34a.pdf:zerohedge :Office of comptroller of currency's quarterly report for bank trading and derivative activies</span>OMGparishiltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10187329390676174925noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8736793883868838717.post-29545444112797102032009-03-31T16:18:00.000-07:002009-03-31T23:17:44.278-07:00I am back --- with a whimper<ul><li>8-6 has got boring, although I am still in research, our whole group has had a recent focus/image makeover, making us almost completely service- rendering bitches for our clients (internal and external).</li><li>I don't like the projects I am supposed to work in 09-10.</li><li>With oil and the economy in free-fall our lofty bonuses (announced Dec08 for 09) are going to be severely trimmed.</li><li>I am feeling immensely strait-jacketed in terms of my career road-map.</li></ul>Sum total of this bullet-based rant: I WANT AN MBA, again.<br /><br />So after being out of the game for just about a quarter, I am back, back to play my part in that indy-500 of rat races aka Mba-admissions (<span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 0); font-weight: bold;">drummrolls please</span>) and that too at an unprecedented time.<br /><br />My mood is sour and am feeling especially bitchy, so lets continue on the path of dourness and take a sneak peek into the current economic scene from an mba aspirant's perspective:<br /><ol><li><span style="font-weight: bold;">Sales and Trading </span>: S&amp;T was the reason I started looking into mbas. I wanted to be in a hedge fund running money like theres no tomorrow. Sadly investment research reveal total <a style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(204, 0, 0);" href="http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&amp;sid=ajkadLT77t8Y&amp;refer=home">AUM for hedge funds have fallen to $965 billion in Jan from just about $1.9 trillion in May 08</a><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">, an astounding 50%+ drop in just about 3 quarters. In may of 08 there were about 10,000 operational hedge funds, today that number is less than 6000, steamrolling towards the 5k mark</span>, of course as hedge funds go belly-up hiring freezes, newly hired traders go over to cnbc and some audition for <a href="http://www.wallstreetstripper.com/">stripper jobs</a>. <span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Since I am feeling especially pissy here is the </span><a style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(204, 0, 0);" href="http://www.huliq.com/1/78724/ken-karpman-delivers-pizza-was-6-figure-ceo">story of a hedge fund manager netting 750k anually who now works as a pizza boy at $7.95/hr</a><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">,but he does deliver your pizzas in his leased Merc, soon to be repoed though.</span><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_U5X3N_m5haQ/SdJ_KCANlEI/AAAAAAAAADM/20jiqSj-8a8/s1600-h/randi+newman+06.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 266px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_U5X3N_m5haQ/SdJ_KCANlEI/AAAAAAAAADM/20jiqSj-8a8/s400/randi+newman+06.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5319453920191157314" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Former Morgan-Stanley junior banker/trader now working as a full-time NYC stripper netting 100k+.</span><br /><br /></li><li><span style="font-weight: bold;">I-banking</span> : Sell side finance to start with (sell side is for the dummies btw), where you are essentially a middleman (akin to a pimp, pimping for money in expensive $2200 black suits and gelled hair, instead of the bing and glean that your average pimp puts on) putting together exotic products for your clients and often mixing in super-toxic little understood instruments into those product pools. But hey you still make decent dough, well you used to, if I was graduating today from a B-school <span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">I wouldnt touch an I-bank with a barge pole.</span><br /><br /></li><li><span style="font-weight: bold;">REITS </span>(Real estate): I said I wouldn't touch I-banks with a barge pole if was graduating today, in that case I need to make a will forbidding my offsprings to use the phrase REITs in any source or form ever. A few charts for the pain that has now been re-christened Real Estate investment:<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_U5X3N_m5haQ/SdKBFPObk0I/AAAAAAAAADU/MnNQkxaVOH0/s1600-h/gsreits7.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 442px; height: 278px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_U5X3N_m5haQ/SdKBFPObk0I/AAAAAAAAADU/MnNQkxaVOH0/s400/gsreits7.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5319456036864365378" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_U5X3N_m5haQ/SdKBtGx1EpI/AAAAAAAAADc/1C7P6220l7c/s1600-h/gsreits6.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 455px; height: 205px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_U5X3N_m5haQ/SdKBtGx1EpI/AAAAAAAAADc/1C7P6220l7c/s400/gsreits6.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5319456721791685266" border="0" /></a>What the first chart basically shows is the massive debt maturities that most REITs are now facing through to 2011. The problem is that REITs need to get financing/refinancing or some structural revolving credit line with their existing as well as new creditors to deal with these. Now those into Real estate will know that earlier this month <a href="http://au.sys-con.com/node/885358">Simon property group</a>, <span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">perhaps the biggest player in this space (also the one with the best credit ratings on moodys and S&amp;P), announced it was raising $500 million in bonds to take care of its debt at an astounding 10.15%!!! </span>Pain anyone.<br /></li></ol><br />Now that my finance options are out of the way and the post is lit up in red, I'll retreat into my corner and sulk some more.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">edit: I finished some catch up reading on mba related stuff and realized that there seems to be a shift in career focus towards clean energy, biofuels and stuff like that at most major B-schools. That is pretty surprising primarily because if you are rejecting Wall street based on your risk-averseness, then moving towards clean energy is almost surely suicidal. It is a sector that survives solely on subsidies and realistically has little chance to be a major/significant player anytime soon. The name though sounds chic and cool "Clean tech". </span>OMGparishiltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10187329390676174925noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8736793883868838717.post-56178624346745577092008-12-06T09:14:00.001-08:002008-12-06T09:16:00.330-08:00World blogger championship of online poker<script>document.write(paramCode)</script><div style="height: 140px; width: 100%;"><a href="http://www.pokerstars.com/blog_tournament/"><img src="http://www.pokerstars.com/images/wbcoop/WBCOOP_banner1.gif" alt="Online Poker" style="margin-right: 10px;" align="left" border="0" /></a><p>I have registered to play in the <a href="http://www.pokerstars.com/blog_tournament/">PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker</a>!</p><p>This <a href="http://www.pokerstars.com/">PokerStars</a> tournament is a No Limit Texas Hold’em event exclusive to Bloggers.</p><p>Registration code: 608823</p></div>OMGparishiltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10187329390676174925noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8736793883868838717.post-57109718225333617042008-12-02T10:42:00.000-08:002009-03-31T12:17:49.738-07:00Sign ahead: CrossroadOh yes I am alive !!!!<br /><br />In a slight dilemma right now regarding the road ahead. So I'll spend this post outlining my current thought process (muddled obviously) and hoping that readers (if any are left) will come up with some constructive comments.<br /><br />Right now I am stuck between deciding whether to pursue an MBA or pursue poker as my longtime career goal (MBA blogs maintain MBA parlance !!).<br /><br />Each have their own pros and cons, but they aren't mutually compatible. Doing an MBA and getting into a long-work-hour job would essentially mean that between work and family (did i mention im tying the knot in Jan 09) time for poker would be extremely restricted if not completely non-existent. At the same time an MBA is a much much safer option than a high risk venture like poker.<br /><br />When it comes to taking up poker full-time, heres the kind of timeline based framework I have in mind. My girlfriend finishes her PhD sometimes in 2011-2012, my green-card application wont come through till maybe 2013ish. Thus the earliest I can quit work and start playing pro would be in the 2013-2014 range (remember without a green-card I cant quit work as I'd be booted out of the US in seconds). Also to rake in any kind of decent dough from poker, I would need a poker-bankroll in the 50-60k range, maybe even higher, possibly 75ksih is a good number. My current poker accounts have about 15kish in them, so I have about a 5 year time-frame to get to 50kish. Certainly doable if I dont keep taking my wiinings out and go on binge spending.<br /><br />Also of great importance is the fact that if I do go fulltime in poker, it gives me the independence of settling down in any city I want, basically in the same place where my girlfriend/wife goes to work. Not to mention the enormous freedom/independence it brings in terms of flexi work-hours.<br /><br />Just to put things into perspective in terms of numbers, heres this year's numbers:<br /><br /><ul><li>9-5 job : 115kish</li><li>poker: YTD tournament profits: 50k</li><li>poker: cash game profits: havent worked it out yet, should be in 10-15kish range.</li><li>poker: some other significant profits in the 30ksih range<br /></li></ul>I havent done the math regarding how an MBA degree will stack up in terms of ROI versus full-time poker, but might be close, especially if I factor in the feel-good feeling of doing something I love and the flexi-hours and the opportunity of settling down wherever I want. I know of atleast one person (Rizen, see blog on left) who left an accountant job to get into poker fulltime.<br /><br />Sigh, I hate decisions. Comments welcome<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span>OMGparishiltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10187329390676174925noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8736793883868838717.post-38216288109900870732008-10-20T09:00:00.001-07:002008-10-20T09:45:16.220-07:00Catching upIts been a while since I've posted, but unfortunately for the readers of this blog I plan to put them through some more misery before I'm done.<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 153, 0);">First of: 'Grats to </span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 153, 0);">MBA-veggie</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 153, 0);"> and </span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 153, 0);">Middle of Nowhere</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 153, 0);"> for securing the first known admits of the 09 mba blogosphere, and almost surely this is just a start.</span><br /><br />As for me life has been kind of meh over the past couple of weeks. Nothing even remotely exciting is happening except that <a href="http://www.blogger.com/%20http://content-usa.cricinfo.com/indvaus2008/content/current/story/374640.html">the Indian cricket team is whipping some creamy Australian ass back home</a>. Oh and I finally finished "Frasier" on Netflix. Frasier has almost always been my favourite sitcom, followed closely by Seinfeld, and frankly the deadpan, snobby/snootish, understated and most importantly the refined play-on-word-humor (compared to the blatant physical humor of friends) of Frasier has always had me cracking.<br /><br />When it comes to the dreaded GMAT preps, much to my non-astonishment I havent made an iota of progress, ah but theres always tomorrow.<br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Random links/news away from this blog:</span><br />Some new priceless sites where I can be found wasting my time:<br /><a href="http://www.engrish.com/">Engrish</a><br /><a href="http://gofugyourself.celebuzz.com/">Go-fug-yourself</a><br /><br />For you Dark Knight junkies, theres a Bob out there (no seriously the guy's name actually is Bob) <a href="http://jalopnik.com/399892/man-builds-batman-tumbler-replica-single+handedly">making the bat-tumbler and batmobile from scratch</a>. Place your orders <a href="http://www.dullam-causey.com/about.php">with Bob here</a>. View of Bob's home-made bat-tumbler:<br /><br /><a try="" href="http://www.blogger.com/%3EHERE%3C/a%3E.%3Cbr%3E%3Cbr%3E%3Ca%20onblur="><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_U5X3N_m5haQ/SPyw7aJn9DI/AAAAAAAAACk/5zvRdnWaqNs/s400/medium_2735512515_40bdcf7a64_o.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5259272999540356146" border="0" /></a><br />Finally some balla-timepieces that successful poker players love to flaunt at the table (snaps taken by Nat Arem at the World Poker Tour 08 Final table):<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_U5X3N_m5haQ/SPyzDWPZW0I/AAAAAAAAAC8/dUyK9n-DQQ8/s1600-h/iveyt.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_U5X3N_m5haQ/SPyzDWPZW0I/AAAAAAAAAC8/dUyK9n-DQQ8/s400/iveyt.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5259275334953032514" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_U5X3N_m5haQ/SPyy8dGRp5I/AAAAAAAAAC0/PilrbDuxHWw/s1600-h/oppenheimt.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 223px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_U5X3N_m5haQ/SPyy8dGRp5I/AAAAAAAAAC0/PilrbDuxHWw/s400/oppenheimt.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5259275216534742930" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_U5X3N_m5haQ/SPyy2tlbLPI/AAAAAAAAACs/UT47M-_Bnsg/s1600-h/imper1umt.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_U5X3N_m5haQ/SPyy2tlbLPI/AAAAAAAAACs/UT47M-_Bnsg/s400/imper1umt.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5259275117881142514" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Finally heres something that I decided to get for myself as a part of the me-too crowd (this is my first shopping spree of any kind in well over 8 months, so indulge me for a second)<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_U5X3N_m5haQ/SPy09MnuKKI/AAAAAAAAADE/LkwJbCU76eE/s1600-h/cimg0495.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_U5X3N_m5haQ/SPy09MnuKKI/AAAAAAAAADE/LkwJbCU76eE/s400/cimg0495.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5259277428314744994" border="0" /></a>Its a Breitling Super Avenger, waiting for its arrival with bated breath !!!OMGparishiltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10187329390676174925noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8736793883868838717.post-83057485063707666872008-10-07T08:37:00.000-07:002008-10-07T14:47:35.834-07:00A quick buck=running good in lifeThose of you who follow this blog might remember <a href="http://omgmbaapps.blogspot.com/2008/09/when-pictures-say-thousand-words.html">this post</a> where I said:<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0); font-weight: bold;"><i>In this week's OMG news</i></span><i>: I won a seat via an online mega-satellite (1k buy-in) to the <a href="http://www.blogger.com/%20http://www.eptlondon.com/">Europeon Poker Tour-London</a> No-Limit-Holdem Championship event, starting October 5th at the Victoria Casino, London. By winning the satellite, I get my buy-in (10k) for the tourney waived, free hotel, free food, free air-fare. I only need to get the visa and everything else is pretty much taken care of, EXCEPT of course freaking work. With a bunch of projects being worked on, my manager is going to flip out if I ask for vacation, lets see how things work out. If I cant make it to London, then I can probably keep the value of the seat I won.<br /><br /></i>Well as it turned out I could not make it to LOndon due to work commitments, but being the degenerate gambler, I wanted a part of the action anyway. So after several back and forth PMs and emails and AOLs, I bought 10% of <a href="http://www.fulltiltpoker.com/eric-liu">Eric Liu's </a> action. In the poker world, in big-buyin (entry fee) live tournaments (such as the 10k EPT london), often players will try and get an insurance by selling a part of their action, that is a backer takes a 10% stake in the player's buy-in and whatever profits (if any) the player makes, the backer takes 10% of that.<br /><br />Anyhoo to cut a long story short, I had a 10kseat already that I couldnt play in, so I redeemed the seat value for money and bought 10% of Eric's action(incidentally I bought 10% stake in 3 other players for a net 4k investment). And while 3 of my 4 horses came out duds, Eric hit the motherload as he finished 4th --> <a href="http://www.cardplayer.com/poker-news/article/5220/ept-michael-martin-wins-ept-london">results here</a> , for a $470k payday for him and a $47k payday for me. I am running really really good in life at the moment, but my taxes are going to get super-complicated next year.<br /><br />Good luck to all those waiting for your MBA admission results, godspeed.....<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 102, 0);">PS: I found this interesting blog post by Steve Jacobs (known in the online poker world as stevesbets), he is a Upenn undergrad who dropped out of penn's grad school to play poker professionally (over 1/2 a mill in winnings in 2 years he played pro poker) and last year had applied to several top b-schools (got into fordham, nyc), but was rejected by wharton. He went </span><a style="color: rgb(0, 102, 0);" href="http://www.stevesbets.com/85/the-tiiiiiiimes-they-are-a-changin/">absolutely ballistic</a><span style="color: rgb(0, 102, 0);"> because of the wharton rejection and his follow-up with Wharton and the whole experience associated with that is a very very good read.</span>OMGparishiltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10187329390676174925noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8736793883868838717.post-501834574286786752008-09-29T14:04:00.000-07:002008-09-29T14:16:46.573-07:00Quantum of SolaceOn Black Monday markets worldwide collapsed by 20%, today we are down just about 9%. Not everything is bad in today's world see !!<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">In this week's OMG news:</span> I finally managed to ride my first stock to $0.00. I had aggressively bought <a href="http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=wb">Wachovia bank-WB</a> when it was part of the financial rally early last month, managing to make a killing as it moved from the 9s (bought a big chunk at 10.x) to the 20s. Even booked a big chunk of those profit, but still held onto a fair number of shares. And today it is at $1.84. Life is good. Oh and yes the market is a bitch.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(153, 0, 0);">Cuurently</span>: On life tilt. And contemplating moving my whole equity-portfolio to my poker accounts. To put it in perspective, ROI in poker 35% (essentially it means that on an average everytime I play an online poker game I make $45, extrapolate that to well over several thousand games), ROI in stock (YTD): -13.5%. Did I say life tilt??OMGparishiltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10187329390676174925noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8736793883868838717.post-9877116201799331192008-09-24T08:37:00.000-07:002008-09-24T09:26:52.058-07:00United Sovereign Socialist States of America and $700 B<span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">“Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency”</span><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);"> </span><br /><br />Yes this is one of the lines in the current 700 billion USD bailout-bill that the Treasury Sec of the <span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 102, 0);">United Sovereign Socialist States of America, formerly known as USA, Henry Paulson (formerly of Goldman Sachs)</span> has sent to the Congress for immediate approval. Please re-read the sentence and try for a second to grasp its ramifications.<br /><br />What this means is that once the bill is passed putting 700B of the taxpayer's money at super-risk,neither the secretary, nor the financials institutes who would be bailed out, are in anyway accountable to the people for either their past actions (no judicial hearings, no congressional hearings on their shady dealings) or for their future actions (meaning we will have no idea where/how/whether the 700 B will be used).<br /><br />Now for those who are still unclear of what some of these so-called "shady" dealings that the big financial instituions have been practising for so long (out of pure greed) heres a primer (<span style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);">for all you mba applicants/students/alumni/b-school adcoms/faculty, remember while reading , that business ethics is something that the mba machinery has preached like for-ever, to me at this point it looks like eye candy at best, at the end of the day what matters to the mba machinery is $$$$ and nothing else)</span>:<br /><ul><li><span style="font-weight: bold;">Sub-prime</span> : <span style="color: rgb(0, 102, 0);"><span style="font-weight: bold;">This is something we all know, but the real problem arose when Lehman and its clique developed financial instruments via which they started trading these mortages as equities</span>.</span></li><li><span style="font-weight: bold;">Credit Swap</span>: <span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">AIG owns a piece of a $500 million sub prime paper (packaged and sold by Lehman), but it aint sure whether the mortagee can pay him back. They go to a $100 million Hedge fund and ask him to cover/insure this mortgage they are holding. Now the insurer (the hedge fund here) has to provide some collateral, usually of the same value as the object being insured (500 mill). But the hedge funds get greedy, AIG hopes no one will notice, and a 100 mill hedge funds acts as an insurer for a 500 mill package. This is credit-swap. Currently the credit-swap market is worth 45.5 trillion dollars (twice the enitre worth of the whole US stock market).</span><br /></li><li><span style="font-weight: bold;">Leveraging</span> : <span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 102, 0);">A typical Hedge fund takes 2% of Asset under management (AUM) as management fees and 20% of all profit as benefits packet. For a 100 mill break-even hedge fund that means that 2mill is what the fund-runners get. But hey, thats monopoly money on Wall street. Sheeeeshh. Hold on, suppose we leverage 10:1, so now instead of 100 mill AUM, our books will show we have 1000 mill AUM. What about our management fees, oh yea they went up 10 fold too. Lehman. Goldman, Merryl and the whole brotherhood was leveraged upto 30:1</span>.<br /></li><li><span style="font-weight: bold;">Coming soon to a Wall street near you</span>: <span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">ARMs (adjustable rate mortages), credit defaults, retail non-housing loan defaults etc etc.</span><br /></li></ul>But unfortuntaley the near Armageddon that these financial executives have brought in has not yet ended. With the govt sponsored free money (a mere 700 billion) that will soon be in Wall street heres how the bankers are reacting to it (via <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/">NYT)</a><br /><ul><li>Wall Street is lining up at the trough for a piece of the action, lobbying to run some of the $700 billion fund — and take huge fees — for their own mess.</li><li>And then there is the jockeying among the banks so they can sell their absolute worst stuff to the government — even loans that have nothing to do with mortgages — and change the rules in the process. The Financial Services Roundtable, which represents big financial services companies, wrote an e-mail message to members on Sunday suggesting, laughably, that “the government bid for the assets should not count as a mark-to-market value for accounting purposes.”</li></ul>Next time some Bschool reps start preaching about their new course on the ethical business, be prepared for some chosen profanities coming your way. Oh and in the meantime, for those of you still writing your essays, please dont forget to leverage your lies 30:1 or more. I know I'll be doing it. After all its an excellent prep for the business world, especially the finances.OMGparishiltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10187329390676174925noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8736793883868838717.post-24544942572542171062008-09-22T06:46:00.000-07:002008-10-07T12:24:59.023-07:00When pictures say a thousand wordsFor many of us wannabe MBAs, especially those interested in finance, the week of Sept 12-Sept 19th was a once-in-a-lifetime joy(?)ride. Call it a black swan, call it the beginning of the end for I-banks, call it a mere blip for the think-long-term advocates, call it whatever you want, but sure as hell this was one unforgettable week (actually this is turning out to be one unforgettable year !!).<br /><br />If you fell asleep on the 12th. and are just waking up, heres a view of last week's mayhem (via <a href="http://www.fundmymutualfund.com/">tradermark</a>):<br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_U5X3N_m5haQ/SNe0FR3Rl2I/AAAAAAAAAB0/pTfGiEe6_5Q/s1600-h/ahistoricweek.gif"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 546px; height: 269px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_U5X3N_m5haQ/SNe0FR3Rl2I/AAAAAAAAAB0/pTfGiEe6_5Q/s400/ahistoricweek.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5248861893511190370" border="0" /></a><br />Interestingly inspite of the absolute carnage in the market (driven almost in whole by the financial crisis), on Friday Sept 12th (week before the carnage) the S&amp;P 500 closed at 1251.7 and on Friday Sept 19th it closed at 1251.3. So if you were truly asleep ala Rip-Van-Winkle, you would have woken up a week later, fired up google finance, and said to yourself "Blaaah, what a boring market, the indices havent moved an inch". Is anybody reminded of the Japanese markets of the mid 90s ?<br /><br />As I get ready for my MBA apps, I wonder how this market will effect the ROI of a 150k+ MBA education. Will it be something like this for us fin wannabes:<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_U5X3N_m5haQ/SNe53s_pphI/AAAAAAAAAB8/LLb0pVNVjKI/s1600-h/lehmanbrotherseffect-done-462size.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 362px; height: 469px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_U5X3N_m5haQ/SNe53s_pphI/AAAAAAAAAB8/LLb0pVNVjKI/s400/lehmanbrotherseffect-done-462size.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5248868257345676818" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0); font-weight: bold;">In this week's OMG news</span>: I won a seat via an online mega-satellite (1k buy-in) to the <a href="http://www.blogger.com/%20http://www.eptlondon.com/">Europeon Poker Tour-London</a> No-Limit-Holdem Championship event, starting October 5th at the Victoria Casino, London. By winning the satellite, I get my buy-in (10k pounds) for the tourney waived, free hotel, free food, free air-fare. I only need to get the visa and everything else is pretty much taken care of, EXCEPT of course freaking work. With a bunch of projects being worked on, my manager is going to flip out if I ask for vacation, lets see how things work out. If I cant make it to London, then I can probably keep the value of the seat I won.OMGparishiltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10187329390676174925noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8736793883868838717.post-68989384695210295812008-09-18T14:42:00.000-07:002008-09-18T14:58:08.785-07:00Diamond and Kashyap from GSB on the current marketThere is an <a href="http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/18/diamond-and-kashyap-on-the-recent-financial-upheavals/#more-3097">interesting piece </a> at the <a href="http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/"> Freakonomics</a> blog, where Doug Diamond and Anil Kashyap from the GSB give us a rundown on the current turmoil in the financial sector. They talk about why Lehman had to fail, Freddie and Fannie had to be rescued, AIG and the bleak scenario going forward for the fin service sectors.<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 102, 0);">A part of this post for the utter layman goes like this:</span><br /><p style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 102, 0);"><strong>I do not work at Lehman or A.I.G. and do not own much stock; why should I care?</strong></p> <p style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 102, 0);">The concern for the man on Main Street is not the bankruptcy of Lehman, per se. Rather, it is the collective inability of major financial institutions to find funding. </p> <p><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 102, 0);">As their own funding dries up, the remaining financial firms will be much more cautious in extending credit to normal firms and individuals. So even for people whose own circumstances have not much changed, the cost of the credit is going to rise. For an individual or business that falls behind on payments or needs an increase in short-term credit because of the slowing economy, credit will be much harder to obtain than in recent years. </span><br /></p><p>Yesterday a friend of mine with a spotless credit record, super high credit score was denied a car lease, on the grounds that his credit history was not "sufficient for him to lease a second car when he already has one", his is a 150k income household.</p><p> Interesting times ahead.<br /></p>OMGparishiltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10187329390676174925noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8736793883868838717.post-20354520018205540992008-09-17T08:40:00.000-07:002008-09-17T09:06:46.886-07:00Lehman LaymanThe I-Bank behemoths have been crushed, the S&amp;P has broken the 1175 mark (Bear-Sterns low of earlier this year), the Russian stock market has been halted, the retail investors have their hides nailed to the wall and on the back of these crushing news heres what the compensation/retirement/severence packages for the executives of these greedy, unregulated jackasses look like:<br /><br />(1) <span style="font-weight: bold;">The demi-god of I-banking Richard Fuld,CEO Lehman</span>: <br />Awarded $71.9 million by his board for bringing down Lehman. Interestingly<span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);"> </span><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0); font-weight: bold;">I learnt via </span><a style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0); font-weight: bold;" href="http://www.fundmymutualfund.com/">Tradermark</a><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0); font-weight: bold;"> that in Lehman's board (supposedly in place to rein in rogue jackass CEOs like Fuld, who is best known for launching scathing public attacks on his executives in meetings) 9 are retirees, 4 are over 75, 1 is a navy admiral, 1 is a theatre producer, only 2 on the board ever had any direct contact with the finance industry. The board has a risk assessment commitee that has met atleast twice in both 06 and 07 (via SEC filings) and to them everything was fine. </span><br /><br />(2) <span style="font-weight: bold;">Merryl Lynch mariachies</span>:<br /><ul><li> <span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 153, 0);">Current CEO John Thain took up Merryl's reins in Dec 1 of 07, after being offered a 15 million USD signing bonus. Since Mr.Thain's first day in office Merryl's shares have fallen a mere 60% . If he decides to leave after the merger he is guaranteed another 11 million USD.</span><br /></li><li><span style="color: rgb(255, 102, 102); font-weight: bold;">Trading Chief at Merryl Thomas Montag who is at Merryl for less than 6 weeks (joined Aug 6th, 2008) is expecting 76 million USD in accelerated compensation of he decides to leave. </span><br /></li><li style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Strategy head Peter Kraus who is at Merryl for less than a week now (yes you heard it right) will get 95 million USD for his hard work over the past week.</span></li></ul><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br />In the meantime 8%+ of my portfolio has been shaved off in the past 2 weeks. God bless Corporate America.</span>OMGparishiltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10187329390676174925noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8736793883868838717.post-2361671685323438872008-09-11T10:56:00.000-07:002008-09-11T11:07:48.864-07:00Apple geniuses now launch the iThingAttention: All marketing MBA aspirants,students read and read and re-read this post.<br /><br />Gotta hand it over to the marketing geniuses at Apple It started with the <span style="font-style: italic;">mac </span>followed by the <span style="font-style: italic;">ipod</span>, then a million versions of the <span style="font-style: italic;">iphone</span> (a million models of which are now on their way to be re-called) and now ladies and gentleman :<br />#################################################################<br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 102, 0);">APPLE LAUNCHES: </span><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 102, 0);">iThing (image below)</span><br />#################################################################<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_U5X3N_m5haQ/SMleRJ8xGuI/AAAAAAAAABs/9K4FvyDnyfU/s1600-h/ithing-707262.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_U5X3N_m5haQ/SMleRJ8xGuI/AAAAAAAAABs/9K4FvyDnyfU/s400/ithing-707262.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5244826889871235810" border="0" /></a><span>From Apple's press release:</span><span style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span><span style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);"><span style="font-weight: bold;">World renowned cool company Apple Inc. has launched their latest product, the iThing – a strange, minimalistic handheld device with no apparent features or uses. Now available in stores globally, the iThing is unbelievable sleek, sexy, desirable and useless. While even Apple has admitted that they have no idea what it actually is, this hasn’t prevented millions of Mac fans from lining up outside retail outlets from the wee hours of the morning to be among the first to own one.</span><br /><br /></span>Complete coverage and details can be found <a href="http://www.bosey.co.in/2008/09/apple-launches-ithing-nobody-knows-what.html">here</a>. I am off to the Apple stores, how about you???</span>OMGparishiltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10187329390676174925noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8736793883868838717.post-35994572356888326362008-09-10T10:15:00.000-07:002008-09-10T13:48:06.694-07:00Vote for OMGSince September is turning out to be a sucky horrid month, I decided to change careers, hoping for some serious support from the mba blogosphere<br /><br /><p><object classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0" height="400" width="450"><br /><param name="movie" value="http://www.blackatlanta.com/announcement/promotions/presidential/main.swf"><br /><param name="flashvars" value="firstname=OMG&amp;lastname=PARISHILTON&amp;urlfin=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.blackatlanta.com/pres.php"><br /><param name="BGCOLOR" value="#000000"><br /><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"><br /><embed src="http://www.blackatlanta.com/announcement/promotions/presidential/main.swf" quality="high" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" flashvars="firstname=OMG&amp;lastname=PARISHILTON&amp;urlfin=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.blackatlanta.com/pres.php" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" bgcolor="#000000" allowscriptaccess="ALWAYS" align="" height="304" width="384"></embed><br /><br /></object><br /></p><br /><p>Dont forget to vote-->OMG<br /></p>OMGparishiltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10187329390676174925noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8736793883868838717.post-5044557691373299872008-09-08T12:54:00.000-07:002008-09-08T13:10:54.478-07:00The Good, the bad and the uglyI found this <a href="http://www.comicvsaudience.net/images/flow_sex.jpg">flowchart</a> on things to say after sex depending on the quality of the said sex.<br /><br />Some of the usable ones:<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 0);">Good sex:</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 0);">- Animal sounds ---> RAWRRR--> T-Rex mating cry</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 0);">-Inner sounds------> Mmmmmm, Oh, Oh, Oh Yeaaa</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 0);">- Romantic--> You are beautiful like the moon.</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 0);">-Foreign/Subtitled Passion----> Anything french</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 102, 0);">Bad sex:</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 102, 0);">-Animal sounds---> Whoooliluii --> Whale mating cry</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 102, 0);"> ----> Baah Baaah-> Sheep</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 102, 0);">-Inner sounds--> Booooo, blaaaahhh, Yabba doobie Dooobe Dooo</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 102, 0);">-Romantic---> I love (not your partner's name) (not their gender) soooo much</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 102, 0);">-Foreign/Subtitled Passion-----> Heil hitler</span><br /><br />Some addendums on the bad sex (via <a href="http://indiauncut.com/">Amit Varma </a>):<br /><br />-Can you atleast cook?<br />-I need to blog some pictures of this. Say cheeeeeese.<br />-Done. 100 girls in 100 days. I won the bet. I don’t need to do this any more.<br /><br />Good luck picking.OMGparishiltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10187329390676174925noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8736793883868838717.post-40674171706778758352008-09-05T14:10:00.000-07:002008-09-05T14:37:44.142-07:00World Championship of OP (WCOOP '08)It is that time of the year, the time to burn a big hole in ones pocket. Today marks the start of the <a href="http://www.pokerstars.com/wcoop/">2008 World Championship of Online Poker</a> over at Pokerstars. It is a 20 day long series with more than 30 championship events and close to 30 million in prize money (schedule below in the image). Unfortunately the start times are horrendous (afternoons in the US) and I will defi not be able to play most of the weekday events (though I havent takes a day's vacation this year, hence ......)<br /><br />Even then I am playing about 12-15 of the events and thats 15kish straight in buy-ins. Sigh.<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 102, 0);">Also there are a whole slew of sidebets and being the degenerate gambler, I am part of both the team and individual sidebets over at </span><a style="color: rgb(0, 102, 0);" href="http://www.pocketfives.com/poker-forums/7/WCOOP-Contest-Sign_2D00_Ups_2A002A002A002A00_-CLOSED_2100_-3244830">P5s</a><span style="color: rgb(0, 102, 0);">. Rules for the sidebets :</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 102, 0);">(1) For teams: 3 memeber teams each team putting up 6k, top ten finishes by each player in a team will be tracked for points, currently there are 7 teams in on the sidebet, winning team takes it all (42k).</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 102, 0);">(2) Individual: 2k per person, same tracking rules as above, winner take all.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 0);">Now for the schedule (courtesy </span><a style="color: rgb(102, 0, 0);" href="http://www.pocketfives.com/poker-forums/7/WCOOP-Contest-Sign_2D00_Ups_2A002A002A002A00_-CLOSED_2100_-3244830">moorman</a><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 0);">):</span><br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_U5X3N_m5haQ/SMGiN5Hi0UI/AAAAAAAAABk/SQ4GQt1FHVk/s1600-h/wcoop.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 506px; height: 420px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_U5X3N_m5haQ/SMGiN5Hi0UI/AAAAAAAAABk/SQ4GQt1FHVk/s400/wcoop.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5242649800790430018" border="0" /></a> <br />Going to be a bad bad month of September, I already feel like a degen donkey. Oh well.<br /><br />btw are I-bankers/hot-shot consultants allowed to write off gambling losses on their expense account?OMGparishiltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10187329390676174925noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8736793883868838717.post-67883798760835618552008-09-01T21:22:00.000-07:002008-09-01T21:36:09.810-07:00Shipppp itttttttt sonnnnnnnn<p></p><p></p><p></p><br />Got my biggest online tournament score in poker yet---> on sunday--->on full-tilt,<br /><br /><br />Wait for it wait for it wait for it<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);font-size:180%;" ><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-family: arial;">$ 7 5 , 0 0 0 . 0 0 0 0</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;">YUPPPIEE ....<br />SHIP IT ALL BABY<br />ZOMG<br />ZOMG</span><br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-size:100%;" >that should pay for a year's tuition at B school and cover one essay's material too right????<br /><br /></span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee, as you can see OMG has been zapped with an even bigger OMG, would be difficult to concentrate on any stuff over the next few days... forgive thys pottiness for the moment.... though a good part of sunday late night, after the win, was spent at a certain posh gentleman's bar blowing $1 bills with friends ;-), that 75k could have gone way bit lighter by the time the night ended ;-)</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">but still</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);font-size:130%;" ><span style="font-weight: bold;">OMG</span></span><br /></span></span>OMGparishiltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10187329390676174925noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8736793883868838717.post-23244337138823972382008-08-28T10:36:00.000-07:002008-08-28T12:46:39.986-07:00Fit fitter fittest<i style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0); font-weight: bold;"> Mirror mirror on the wall who is the fittest of them all </i><br /><br />Reading <a href="http://blog-adekku.blogspot.com/2008/08/business-school-selection.html">this post</a> about business school selection and a gazillion more posts of this kind, in which people fret and fret and fret yet again about finding their "fits" for a B-school, I decided to make a small post to highlight my thoughts on this issue.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(153, 0, 0);">Warning : t<span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 0);">his post does not not apply to anyone who is going for a very narrow particular focus, that only a tiny handful of schools might offer, but for the rest of you read on.</span></span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(102, 0, 0);"> Note: binge drinking, bar-hopping across Europe, social treks to somalia, mount everest expeditions dont interest me, so all that would be left out of of the fit equation as well. </span><br /><br /><br />To begin with I am fairly simple person with fairly simple needs when it comes to a MBA program. First and foremost it needs to be a top 10 program, a top 15 at worst, there would be no justification for me to leave my current job (which I like, not love as most of us mortals have a hard time finding jobs that we are doe-eyedly in love with) if its not a top 15 program atleast.<br /><br />Now as soon as you set up this filter what happens is that most of everything else that you want from a MBA program (salary, strong alum network, good courses, plenty of diverse opportunities), kind of fall straight into your lap.<br /><br />After all a top 15 MBA program will NOT in God's worst day have a dismal placement record, it will almost always have a decent balance between grads it sends out to consulting and finance (2 of the most commonly sought after post-mba professions), it will have a strong alum network, courses offered by them will be more or less on an even keel in the ball-park sense, yes some may be more strong in a p'lar field, and some in another, but that is again way over-exaggerated. Believe me a couple of course in a p'lar subject/concentration/field is not going to make you an expert in that. Having specialized in a particular field myself take it from me that specalization in any field comes from research work and not course-taking, courses give you an idea (note that it is just an idea not even an in-depth grasp) of the fundamentals, and an expert then builds on those fundamentals through independent research. And anyway an MBA is not designed to make you a specialist, go for fin PhD for that.<br /><br />So why the all the hulaboo about finding schools that "fit" you or as it is more popular to say "Finding my fit in schools" ??? Barring the most miniscule of subtleties, what the effing difference does a MC wannabe MBA applicant care if he is going to Wharton/Kellogg?? If you have a festish for the Kellogg campus, well and good, good for you (I btw have negative fetish for HBS, in the sense that I absolutely loathe them), but apart from that, from a holistic big-picture MBA point of view it doesnt make an iota of difference whether you land up in either of the two.<br /><br />A much better, more practical question and more realistic question is the following:<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">"</span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 102, 0); font-weight: bold;">Given my interests, background, my so called profile etc etc, in which school do I have a realistic chance of getting in</span><span style="font-weight: bold;">".</span><br />Once you've identified schools based on the above filter, you can then go about in a logical fashion trying to decipher the school's other vital stats of interest, which, again, if its a top 10 school, the subtleties with be 19-20 at best. And I guess in a way many applicants mix and mash and muddle up the question of their chances of getting in with the "fit" factor.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(153, 0, 0);">In other OMG news: I have gone through Montauk !! Maybe I 'll review that bible sometime down the line, reviewing bibles though are oft considered to be the work of heretics !!!</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Till next time, cheerio baby.</span>OMGparishiltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10187329390676174925noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8736793883868838717.post-11314425075928948192008-08-24T01:24:00.000-07:002008-08-24T01:59:03.518-07:00New badass setupFinally this weekend I got around to setting up a kind of formal office at home for playing poker. My current setup looks like this:<br /><br /><br /><p><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_U5X3N_m5haQ/SLEbHiqGNLI/AAAAAAAAAA0/lUPio0xik6k/s1600-h/setup1.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5237997657985004722" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_U5X3N_m5haQ/SLEbHiqGNLI/AAAAAAAAAA0/lUPio0xik6k/s400/setup1.jpg" border="0" /></a> </p><br />I have 2 dual screens with 1600X1200 resolution, this will confortably allow me to play 8 tables at a time without any kind of overlap or glitch in resolution. The box itself is pretty standard and nothing fancy except that it has a kickass graphics card.<br /><br /><p><strong><span style="color:#cc0000;">And now for your visual pleasure here are some real real badass poker setup from the pros:</span></strong></p><p><br /></p><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_U5X3N_m5haQ/SLEdCOLwmsI/AAAAAAAAAA8/e7yhei3Euoo/s1600-h/tillerman-setup1.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5237999765612960450" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_U5X3N_m5haQ/SLEdCOLwmsI/AAAAAAAAAA8/e7yhei3Euoo/s400/tillerman-setup1.jpg" border="0" /></a> This is Tiller's setup, he has a TV hooked up to his desk as well, the two right screens are where he is playing online (8 tables, the 8 ovals).<br /><br /><br /><br /><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_U5X3N_m5haQ/SLEddnyUY_I/AAAAAAAAABE/myKH1arx_cU/s1600-h/setup.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5238000236342043634" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_U5X3N_m5haQ/SLEddnyUY_I/AAAAAAAAABE/myKH1arx_cU/s400/setup.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><p>This is Dag "dmikkel" Mikkel's setup. He is a high stakes cash/tournament player playing at nosebleed levels of $100/$200 and above (meaning at ay given time he is sitting with 30k+ plus on the table).<br /></p><br /><br /><p></p><br /><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_U5X3N_m5haQ/SLEeK0w6YUI/AAAAAAAAABM/Q6tkhR5sZcc/s1600-h/dscn0388ga1.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5238001012919918914" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_U5X3N_m5haQ/SLEeK0w6YUI/AAAAAAAAABM/Q6tkhR5sZcc/s400/dscn0388ga1.jpg" border="0" /></a> This is Cole "cts" South's setup, you can see the number of tables (the ovals on the left screen) he is playing at a time. And on each of those tables he is sitting with atleast 20k. (do the math)<br /><br /><br /><p><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_U5X3N_m5haQ/SLEgXrYVRxI/AAAAAAAAABU/JSH1YVktBFk/s1600-h/rapdurrr-setup.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5238003432762459922" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_U5X3N_m5haQ/SLEgXrYVRxI/AAAAAAAAABU/JSH1YVktBFk/s400/rapdurrr-setup.jpg" border="0" /></a> This is Tom "Durrrr" Dwan's (guy on the right) new office, on the process of being setup. Durrrr is currently the most prolific high-stakes player on the net, winning and losing a ferrari a day.<br /></p><br /><p><span style="color:#990000;">Here is a recent 150k worth hand between durrr and phil ivey on full-tilt (this is what the online tables look like, the ovals in the pics above):</span></p><br /><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_U5X3N_m5haQ/SLEhdVdslFI/AAAAAAAAABc/84MdF-jFj_M/s1600-h/b1d10e7bafa4421L.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5238004629470221394" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 414px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 232px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" height="223" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_U5X3N_m5haQ/SLEhdVdslFI/AAAAAAAAABc/84MdF-jFj_M/s400/b1d10e7bafa4421L.jpg" width="409" border="0" /></a><br /><p><br /></p><br /><p><i>Ok, lets play some poker now!!! I can almost hear the money train going CHI-CHINGGGGGGG !!!</i></p>OMGparishiltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10187329390676174925noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8736793883868838717.post-66180069197678395752008-08-19T20:53:00.000-07:002008-08-19T21:23:25.169-07:00Bad beat slayerI am on a horrible 15k downswing in poker over the past couple of months, and a good chunk of my YTD profits have been wiped out. GRRRRRRR !!!!<br /><br />Poker can be a brutal game and without proper discipline it can break a player. There could be extended periods where you put in the money as a 80-20 favorite only to see your donkey opponent catch a miracle card to bust you. This is what we poker players term a BAD BEAT.<br /><br />One of my favourite online tournament pros <a href="http://rex55.blogspot.com/">Chetna "Rex55" Joshi </a> puts it best in her blog, and curiously this does not just apply to poker, it applies to any difficult journey that anyone might decide to take up (an MBA app process for example).:<br /><p style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(102, 0, 0); font-weight: bold;">Bad beats are non-exclusive. They are blind to race, creed, and gender. They are merciless. Every single player that sits down to play cards, takes bad beats. The more you play, the more you take... the more hands you are dealt, the more likely it is statistically that you will take a bad beat. </p><p style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(102, 0, 0); font-weight: bold;">So now if every single poker player is taking bad beats across the globe.. how is everyone dealing with them? </p><p style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(102, 0, 0); font-weight: bold;">What is your standard reaction when you get bad beat?</p><p style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(102, 0, 0); font-weight: bold;">*Do you curse and chat box spew?</p><p style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(102, 0, 0); font-weight: bold;">*Do you donk out of all other tournies that are going well? </p><p style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(102, 0, 0); font-weight: bold;">*Do you throw things or punch walls?</p><p style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(102, 0, 0); font-weight: bold;">*Do you reach for alcohol and/or drugs?</p><p style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(102, 0, 0); font-weight: bold;">*Do you tilt off your roll?</p><p style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(102, 0, 0); font-weight: bold;">*Do you copy and paste your hand history and send it to all your buddies on messenger so they can now relive your bad beats along with their own?</p><p style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(102, 0, 0); font-weight: bold;">*Do you take it out on your family and/or significant other?</p><p style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(102, 0, 0); font-weight: bold;">*Do you take it out on yourself?</p><p style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(102, 0, 0); font-weight: bold;">or..............</p><p style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(102, 0, 0); font-weight: bold;">-Do you assess your play, your own decision, your role in the hand, learn what you can and move on?</p><p style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(102, 0, 0); font-weight: bold;">The true damage of a bad beat isnt the hand itself....it is the aftermath that ensues...It is our inability to accept it for what it is...The damage lies in the snowball affect it has on everything else... when we allow it to permeate into other tournies... into a bankroll we grinded so long and so hard for... into our personal lives.... that is where the true damage of bad beats take place. </p><p style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(102, 0, 0); font-weight: bold;">How many poker players are equipped with the armor to tolerate the "blows" poker will undoubtedly fire at you? </p><p style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(102, 0, 0); font-weight: bold;">The field is narrow...Most fall victim to the grimy hands of 'Tilt,' and SELF-defeat...<br />Don't let this be you... </p><p style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(102, 0, 0); font-weight: bold;">Poker is all about perspective.</p><p style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(102, 0, 0); font-weight: bold;">Don't wallow in your defeats or self-pity...<br />Don't question your abilities or skills...<br />Don't let yourself fall into a cold, dark abyss, with a tape recorder on repeat playing<br />"you suck at cards...you are a loser...how could you not have folded that hand? you donkey...stick to your day job...you have no hope...." </p><p style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(102, 0, 0); font-weight: bold;">And Please don't surrender to bad beats...</p><p style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(102, 0, 0); font-weight: bold;">It's all about our perspective...<br />Mind over matter...it is amazing how powerful self-perspective can be...<br />it is what we make of it...<br />what our mind creates of it...<br />it is what it is...<br />what we allow it to be... </p><p style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(102, 0, 0); font-weight: bold;">Once you are able to keep bad beats in proper perspective for what they are.. an inherent part of the game that every participant has the choice to deal with, in his or her own way... then you will see how much more of your time and energy is spent constructively, as opposed to destructively...</p><p style="color: rgb(102, 0, 0); font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-style: italic;">and not only will you emerge a stronger Poker Player...but a stronger Person...</span></p><p style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">The game of poker is like a lifetime of experience/emotions squeezed into one 8 hour playing session. You can experience the full spectrum of emotions ranging from complete boredom to utter frustration, to gut wrenching disappointment, and pure fist pumping adrenaline rush infused joy in that 8 hour period. And like life what is important is that throughout you maintain your perspective, your focus and most importantly your self belief, else the game will break you.<br /></p><p style="color: rgb(102, 0, 0);"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">I am taking a week long break from poker, and hoping to hit the tables next week, with renewed enthusiasm, a clear mind and much much better focus.</span><br /></p><p style="color: rgb(102, 0, 0);"><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"></span></p><p style="color: rgb(102, 0, 0);"><span style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span> </p>OMGparishiltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10187329390676174925noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8736793883868838717.post-67853181676770084202008-08-18T10:06:00.000-07:002008-08-18T11:12:08.000-07:00OMG an mba postOne of my undergrad juniors got into HBS, class of '10. Weeeeeeeeee !! Very nice. I havent sopken with him in length, but am planning to do so soon. He was a really really bright chap, was the topper (in the top 3 atleast) in perhaps the toughest discipline at my undergrad alma mater (Mech Engg.), an accomplished tabla player and drummer, and a very very good quizzer (though my undergrad quiz team did dish out some serious hidings to them in various inter-college competitions... ok brag time, I was a univ blue in dramatics having won the quizzing event in the 2002 edition of All India University nationals, end of brag), went onto HLL (Unilever of India) as a management trainee I beleive (the toughest job to crack in campus placements at that time), and is now all set to come into HBS. Way to go !!<br /><br />I also recently discovered that another of my UG junior is in Darden right now, set to graduate next year !!!<br /><br />Anyhoo as per my MBA goes, I have taken the first baby steps towards the GMAT, meaning ordered the books (whole of manhattan, OG, and <span style="font-style: italic;">ahem ahem cough cough</span> Richard Montauk's book!!)<br /><br />Now I dont have anything personal against Montauk, but these self help, self development, chicken soup for the soul/mba/life kind of books really get under my skin. Dont get me wrong, I read a lot, but I once tried to read "The world is flat" and then "The monk who sold his ferrarri" (both came highly recommended), and I was cursing in utter frustration within the first 50 pages, the plethora of cliches in those books are mind-numblingly astronomical. Hopefully Montauk lets me get past 50 pages.<br /><br />But the signs are ominous, another of my friends apping for Fall 09 was all ga-ga over some Morpheus-que matrix that the book supposedly has that can allegedly lay bare your life as soon as you fill it up. Dont know about him, but I would like to believe that my life cannot be strait jacketed and matrixifed as easily as that. But it is supposed to have some adcom winning essays, so it shouldnt be all bad, though my Bullshit-quotient detector will be on high alert. Maybe I'll post a detailed review once the book comes in.<br /><br />What else, o yea, a shoutout to Forrest Gump for his replies to my email queries. One of the main points of which were, whether an interest in finance (which is probably the reason for my mba quest) should be mentioned in my apps, given that there is NO supporting evidence to back that up. His line was that one can potray oneself as a career changer and thus weave stuff around it, but I am still ultra-skeptical about that. I have a strong case for SC for the energy and commodity space, and as someone pointed out (Soni??), that you should stick with things that you can tie up (Background--->Past exp--->Future goal) into one cognitive entity for the adcom. (<span style="font-style: italic;">This is beginning to sound like a cliche now, belaboring the same point over and over... GAAAHHH)</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">And to finish this piece off, an OMG sized howler to the </span><a style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);" href="http://www.clearadmit.com/">Clearadmit folks</a><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">, somehow my blog never features in their Friday-Frontline reporting !!! Sacrilege !! Clearadmit folks you need some Paris Hilton spice to keep your piece interesting, yea yea I know you have volumes of pages covering essays of all and any school on the planet earth and all that blaah. BUT that gets a bit boring after some-time, what with the often used phrase accompanying any and every essay analysis "<span style="font-style: italic;">Now remember to tie up your experience no.X to your School no.Y fit", "This is a modified version of the career gols essay, but with a few caveats". </span>Guys guys, c'mon, get Paris on board and see your eyeballs double (well maybe not double but you are guaranteed one extra narcisstic eyeball from houston,texas).<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Till next time, happy essaying applicants....<br /><br /></span></span>OMGparishiltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10187329390676174925noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8736793883868838717.post-70158610253506665062008-08-17T08:03:00.000-07:002008-08-17T08:32:43.721-07:00Sunday scheduleHaving spent the whole of saturday in the office, I am ready for a stress-filled fun sunday (was that an oxymoron--oh w/e). Sunday is the BIG day for online tournament poker. Most of the online sites run some of the bigger buy-ins and big-payout tournaments on sunday. And this week there is some added juice.<br /><br />Today is the last day of <a href="http://www.fulltiltpoker.com/">Full-tilt's</a> <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Full-Tilt Online Poker Series IX</span> <a href="http://www.fulltiltpoker.com/promotions/full-tilt-online-poker-series/schedule.php"> (FTOPS IX)</a>, and having missed out all of the previous events in FTOPS IX ( due to work grrrrrrrrr) I am gonna play both of today's events.<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 102, 0); font-weight: bold;">My schedule for today (on FTOPS IX):</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 102, 0); font-weight: bold;">2:00 PM EST: $129 No-Limit Holdem Knockout, $400,000 guaranteed</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 102, 0); font-weight: bold;">6:00 PM EST: $535 No-Limit Holdem Main event, $2,500,000 guaranteed</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 102, 0); font-weight: bold;">Also might play (on Pokerstars):</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 102, 0); font-weight: bold;">3:30 PM EST: $215 No-Limit Holdem Sunday Million : $1.5M guaranteed</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 102, 0); font-weight: bold;">6:00 PM EST: $215 No-Limit Holdem Sunday Second chance: $700,000 guaranteed</span><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(153, 0, 0); font-weight: bold;">One freaking time!!!!!!!!!!!!!!</span>OMGparishiltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10187329390676174925noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8736793883868838717.post-27207244464748908032008-08-13T15:01:00.000-07:002008-08-13T15:16:11.874-07:00Hedge fund trackingJ over at <a href="http://marketfolly.blogspot.com/">Market Folly </a> has started his hedge fund tracking series as hedge funds, with $100 million+ in AUM (asset under mgmt), start disclosing their holdings as of Jun 30th 08 to the SEC . And as always it is extremely interesting to see where and in what sectors the "<span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 102);">big and smart money</span>" is going in and out off.<br /><br />Some of the hedge funds he will be tracking and reporting on are:<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 0);">-Blue Ridge Capital (John Griffin)</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 0);">- Lone Pine Capital (Steve Mandel)</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 0);">- Maverick Capital (Lee Ainslie)</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 0);">- Viking Global (Andreas Halvorsen)</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 0);">- Tiger Global (Chase Coleman)</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 0);">- Touradji Capital (Paul Touradji</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 0);">- Tudor Investment Corp (Paul Tudor Jones)</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 0);">- Moore Capital (Louis Bacon)</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 0);">- Caxton Associates (Bruce Kovner)</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 0);">"Straight up beastly funds" which you have to keep an eye on due to their awesome returns over the years:</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 0);">- Atticus Capital (Timothy Barakett)</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 0);">- Tremblant Capital (Bret Barakett)</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 0);">- Clarium Capital (Peter Thiel)</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 0);">- Pequot Capital Management (Art Samberg)</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 0);">- Harbinger Capital (Philip Falcone)</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 0);">- BP Capital (Boone Pickens)</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 0);">- Greenlight Capital (David Einhorn)</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 0);">- Paulson &amp; Co (John Paulson)</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 0);">- Jana Partners (Barry Rosenstein)</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 0);">A few deep value &amp; activist funds:</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 0);">- Third Point (Daniel Loeb)</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 0);">- Pershing Square (Bill Ackman)</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 0);">- Okumus Capital (Ahmet Okumus)</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 0);">- T2 Partners (Whitney Tilson)</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 0);">- Tontine Partners (Jeffrey Gendell)</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 0);">And, a few new funds on the scene:</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 0);">- Conatus Capital (David Stemerman, ex-Lone Pine)</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 0);">- Highliner Investment Group (Anand Parekh, ex-Citadel)</span><br /><br />A massive shoutout to J for his huge effort in going through the 13Fs and coming up with his reports. Much appreciated.OMGparishiltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10187329390676174925noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8736793883868838717.post-19525911674982230942008-08-11T10:35:00.000-07:002008-08-11T12:05:24.102-07:00Why so serious??For one because I've been a busy-bee at work. A new technology is being shipped out of the lab, going in for its first "production" run, and OMG being the lead on this technology, you can guesstimate the busy-ness of this bee. And since no-one from work reads this blog, I'll go out on a limb and leak some juicy bit of privy info--> the "production run" of this new technology is going to be on one of the biggest oil-discoveries of our times (think chevron, think back a couple of months). <span style="font-style: italic;font-family:georgia;" ><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 153, 0);">Shhhhhhhh.... dont tell anyone... mums the word... else i'll have to shoot you... etc etc.</span></span><br /><br />Anyway what else is going on in the OMG world??<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);">Oh yes, of course the stock market <span style="font-weight: bold;">AND IT--IS-----> EARNINGS SEASON</span>!!!!<br /><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 102, 0);font-family:georgia;" >Trum-La-La-La , Drumrolls and bring on all that jazz please</span><br />Did I mention that we are in a market where the current trade is : oil=natural gas=coal=iron-ore=fertilizers=global-growth. What that means is that the whole commodity sector is trading as a group. If oil goes down, then so does fertilizer (did I mention on the back of stellar earnings, eg </span><a style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);" href="http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=mos">Mosanto</a><span style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);">, </span><a style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);" href="http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=pot">Potash</a><span style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);">, etc etc ), of course lets forget the fact that fertilizer has nothing to do with crude-oil, but for now, for the hedge fund computers atleast, anything even remotely commodity-sounding has to be puked out.<br /><br />Most of the charts of my fav stocks in these sectors have broken down, and I am going to open positions/reload soon (soon btw is not this week). <span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 0);">On the radar: </span><a style="color: rgb(102, 0, 0);" href="http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=chk">CHK(nat gas)</a><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 0);">, </span><a style="color: rgb(102, 0, 0);" href="http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=mos">MOS(fertilizer)</a><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 0);">,</span><a style="color: rgb(102, 0, 0);" href="http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=mee">MEE(coal)</a><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 0);">,</span><a style="color: rgb(102, 0, 0);" href="http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=anr">ANR(coal)</a><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 0);">,</span><a style="color: rgb(102, 0, 0);" href="http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=rig">RIG (oil-drilling)</a><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 0);">,</span><a style="color: rgb(102, 0, 0);" href="http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=clf">CLF(iron-ore mining)</a><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 0);"> to name a few.<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">I recently read a hedge fund guru's comments (I forget whether it was</span> </span></span>Stephen Mandel of Lone Pine Capital or Louis Bacon of Moore Capital Management) that they try and catch a lot of bottoms, because that is where the big profits are going to come from. Their mantra goes something like this:<br /><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(51, 51, 255);"> Catch the bottom, not the middle, definitely not the top-->reiterate that fundamentals are in place--> <span style="font-weight: bold;">have the balls to pull the trigger and place "</span><span style="font-weight: bold;">big bets</span><span style="font-weight: bold;">" on that bottom.</span><br /><br /></span>Note the huge emphasis on the balls-worthiness and big bets, that is the key because if you are not going to place a big bet on what you think is a bottom then your profits arent going to be spectacular. On an average what they said is that if they catch 4-5 right bottoms and place big bets on those per year, they will usually return 30%+ that year. Another interesting part of this article was the fact that hedge funds usually consider I-bankers as glorified pencil pushers at best. This is, kind of, in-line with my thinking that sell-side finance is crap.<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style="color: rgb(51, 0, 153);">And the point of all this bottom-talk is that I think I caught a bottom in this </span><a style="color: rgb(51, 0, 153);" href="http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=mtl">Russian ex-superstar</a><span style="color: rgb(51, 0, 153);">. Bought a big chunk at $20</span>.<span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);"> And we had caught a bottom in early July in this potentially huge </span><a style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);" href="http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=cfsg">Chinese growth story</a> in <span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 204);">the high 7s.</span><br /><br />Anyhoooo<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Lets see what else.... anything that relates to an MBA. Essays, GMAT blues, school-fitting, anything... what about an IB/MC debate...... <span style="font-weight: bold;">Naaaahh!!!!! Too boring.</span>... And Oh-My-God, we dont want to be boring do we. Thats so not Paris Hilton baby.</span><br /><br /><i>Disclosure: Long CHK, RIG, MTL, MOS, CFSG in Personal account</i><br /></span><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 0);"><br /><br /></span>OMGparishiltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10187329390676174925noreply@blogger.com1